The Secret O.W.L. Society | 11 Highlights from 2023
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Ola!
It’s a brand new year and I’m still deep in reflecting on 2023. I thought it would be fun to share a slice of my reflections - the big highlights and creations of the last 12 months. You also get to see what I picture myself doing in 2024.
Highlight number 11 might surprise you!
Big Life Event: Moved from Miami to Portugal
At the end of January 2023, my husband and I moved from Miami to Portugal with our two sons. We touched down in Lisbon for a few days and then explored the Algarve area for a month before settling down in Porto. We love it here. It’s been an amazing place to experience as a family because of how much people love children here.
Our quality of life has improved drastically. Even just having the ability to walk everywhere and not rely on a car has done a lot of good for our mental health - not to mention physical health!
➡️ MOVING FORWARD
We’re really happy with where we’re at here in Porto. I love that we’re just a couple minutes walk away from hopping on a picturesque tram to the heart of the city or the beach.
2. Most Popular Podcast: You Are the Master of Your Ideas
In 2023, I published 22 podcast episodes - an average of 1-2 per month. I love the fact that my most popular episode is an episode I recorded over a year ago. I’m a big fan of using platforms where the value of your content goes up over time instead of down. In other words, no matter how old a piece of content gets on a platform like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pinterest, or Youtube, it can still attract new people because of the search engine nature of those platforms.
A pic of my desk and new microphone set up.
Fun fact: I’ve recorded 99% of my podcasts using the mic on my apple headphones and JUST invested in a real deal microphone that I’m going to start using for the show in 2024.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD
I’m happy to continue publishing The Magic is You podcast. It takes up very little time because I don’t do any editing or prep work and I talk about whatever I desire. ☺️
I want to go deeper into helping other people use podcasting as a tool for healing from the reasons why we are so afraid to use our voice. I share this approach in my Piece of Cake Podcast course. Right now, I’m planning on doing a challenge around podcasting every day for 7 days for the students of Say Yes to Desire.
I’m excited to use the tool Castmagic more with my podcast. Right now, I’m actually using it to help me create a 7 day course-like experience that is going to act as a companion for the podcast. Just something fun to create for The Magic is You Podcast super fans.
3. Most Popular YouTube Video: Making Passive Income with Planners
In 2023, I published 25 videos on Youtube - an average of 2 per month and the most popular video is actually the very first video I put on my Youtube channel - 6 years ago! I love that. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been able to maintain a multi-six figure business without Facebook or Instagram. When content you published years ago is still driving traffic, you can get solid results without having to be on a content creation hamster wheel.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I’m definitely going to keep posting on YouTube. I use it primarily to share episodes from the podcast, tutorials, and the behind the scenes of different products. I use Canva to easily edit all my videos (I have a class on this in Say Yes to Desire) and I see myself having even more fun on that front and doing more of what works - like doing giveaways to people in the comments.
4. New programs I created in 2023:
In the course of my online journey, I have literally made and sold dozens of courses and I’m still going strong in that department. 😁 My “secret” to course creation is that I’m always taking what I already for made for myself and turning it into a product or program that other people can buy. A lot of business advice will tell you to focus on what problems you can solve for other people. I teach a different approach. Focus on solving YOUR OWN problems. Don’t worry about anyone else. When you’ve solved your own problem, you have everything you need to create a product that will benefit your true fans.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I see myself continuing to create more products in 2024. I see some fun planners on the horizon, some more 30 day journal-based experiences (similar to my most recent one called Emerge). And I see myself utilizing “pay what you want” pricing even more.
5. Teachery Templates I made in 2023:
In 2023, I added some new Teachery themes to my affiliate bonus for people who join Wandering Aimfully through me. These were really fun to create - one is a “Book Club” theme and the other is a “Newsletter Hub” theme. Of course, these themes can be tweaked to serve other purposes, but it’s really handy when you don’t have to make something completely from scratch.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I have even more Teachery bonus goodies on the way! :D
6. Free planners & journals I made in 2023:
2023 marked the second full year of releasing a free planner every quarter. The beauty of this is none of these products were created from scratch. There were all made with our time-saving templates. The planners were made with The Digital Planner Template Kit and the journal was made with The 30 Day Digital Journal Template.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I see myself making more goodies from my templates. Probably not on a quarterly schedule any more though. I’m just going to follow desire and either give them away for free or make them “pay what you want”. <3
7. Free promotional hubs I made with Teachery in 2023:
Wandering Aimfully Hub
I designed this hub to help me showcase the benefits of joining Wandering Aimfully through my affiliate link. You can check it out HERE.
Holiday Sale Hub
This was a festive way to give people a taste of all my different programs. I enjoy doing cute things like adding Christmas music in the background and falling snow.
Free Taste of Our Course
Aimee and I created this back in the second quarter of 2023. It gives people a taste of our course so that they could decide whether they wanted to take advantage of the sale we were having at the time. You can check it out HERE.
Say Yes to Desire Planner Hub
This was a fun companion to the free planner I made for the community back in July 2023. You can check it out HERE.
A “hub” is a term I’ve been using for the last 5 years to define anything that I make with Teachery that isn’t technically a course. Teachery is an online course platform, but it’s also great for creating “containers” for anything you want to share, promote, or sell.
Basically I use Teachery a lot to create PROMOTIONS. I learned a few years ago that sales don’t come from just having things for people to buy. Sales come from having a promotion around the thing that you’re selling. And I like to have a lot of fun with how I promote things so that at the end of the day, it doesn’t even feel like a promotion. It’s just a fun experience for everyone. Using Teachery to create hubs around specific promotions helps me do just that.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I’m definitely going to keep playing with Teachery in this way. I act on inspiration, so it’ll be fun to see what wants to come to life next in 2024.
8. The biggest product improvement I made in 2023:
2023 marked a big makeover for our bestselling Digital Planner Template Kit. After a couple years of using the template myself to create a new planner every 3 months, I took everything I learned and used it to up-level the template. The main goal was to make it ridiculously easy to have a beautiful finished result with as little tweaking as possible. So now the kit has all new templates, all new tutorials, and I’m really happy with the love it’s received.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
I’m excited to use the new template myself to add some more fun “Pay What You Want” planners to my shop.
9. I created a magazine just about the story of the Secret O.W.L. Society
It’s been more than 10 years since I started this business and there has been a lot of healing and growing along the way. I found myself wanting to put the “evolution story” of it all in one convenient, pretty place. So of course I jumped right into making a digital magazine in Canva! New people are joining the Secret O.W.L. Society family every day and by having the magazine tucked inside nearly every course I sell, I can rest assured knowing that everyone has an easy way to understand what this space is all about.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
It would be fun to put out a new issue of the magazine that members of the community can participate in - even if it’s just a mini issue. However, I’m going to wait until it’s a burning desire before opening that up as a project. If you would like to make your own digital magazine, check out my course: Design Your Own Digital Magazine.
10. ALL The Tools that Supported Me in 2023:
Lifetime Teachery account (via Wandering Aimfully) for hosting my courses, hubs, journals, planners - basically anything I’m selling.
Lifetime Thrivecart account for my affiliate and joint venture programs and check out pages with flexible pricing options.
Fathom Analytics for simple, straight-forward website analytics.
Flipbooklets for turning my planners, journals, and magazines into flippable PDFs.
Castmagic for turning my podcast episodes into content I can use in emails, courses, blog posts, book chapters, etc.
Gusto for running payroll and taking care of taxes (I’m an employee of my own business).
Butter for hosting live calls for students of Say Yes to Desire.
Quickbooks for my accounting.
Notion for project management.
Flodesk for email marketing.
Canva for graphics and templates.
Squarespace for websites and sales pages.
Elfsight for widgets.
Brevo for customer support.
Vimeo for hosting videos.
Zapier for connecting different software. For instance, when someone buys a particular course via Thrivecart, Zapier knows to automatically add that customer to the appropriate segment for that course in Flodesk.
Wise for a high yield savings account, tracking exchange rates, and transferring money.
11. My NUMBER ONE driver of traffic to my website was…
Pinterest!
Can you believe that random pins I’ve pinned to Pinterest years and years ago drive hundreds of thousands of people from Pinterest to my website? In 2023, I may have pinned 10 pins to Pinterest in total and yet Pinterest brought 70,000 visits to my website in 2023 because of stuff I pinned forever ago.
➡️ MOVING FORWARD:
If you want to hear what I’m planning on doing for marketing in 2024, make sure you’re subscribed to my podcast!
And that’s it for my business highlight review!
Thank you so much for being here. Here’s to another year of evolution, healing, play, and self-expression.
Warmest,
Michelle Rohr
Founder of The Secret O.W.L. Society
Want to work more closely with me?
Join us in Say to Desire!
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